Jonathan Poritsky

As most of you already know, on Novemeber 5th, 2007 the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike after being unable to come to a con­tract agree­ment with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Today, we are enter­ing the third month of the strike. The con­se­quences of the strike have already been notice­able to the pub­lic. As you know, late-night telelvi­sion has been off the air until this week, and most scripted pro­grams ran out of episodes lead­ing up to the hol­i­days. But while you may be able to live with­out a few choice pro­grams as we enter the new year, I think it’s impor­tant that you real­ize that there is a much more impor­tant loss in this strike.Today, my office, a post pro­duc­tion house based in Manhattan, laid off at least 20 employ­ees. This was round 2 of strike lay­offs, the first being 16 employ­ees a month ago. Thankfully, I dodged a bul­let and remain employed. By no means is this the worst casu­alty of the strike so far, nor is it even close to the kind of down­siz­ing that has plagued many other indus­tries, but of course, I can only speak for what is hap­pen­ing around me.

Since the strike began I have sided with the writ­ers. I con­tinue to stand with them as I truly believe that what they are fight­ing for is good for this busi­ness. Over the past few decades the enter­tain­ment indus­try has spun out of con­trol for a num­ber of rea­sons that are not the focus of this par­tic­u­lar post­ing. Suffice it to say that for some time con­tracts have been stretched and bent, and now they have finally reached a break­ing point. The prob­lems are not exclu­sive to the writ­ers, it just so hap­pens that their con­tract was up before the other unions.

In any event, I am not a guild or union member.

In fact, no union cov­ers what I do. So at the end of the day, employed or not, I will not see a ben­e­fit from this strike (unless of course I start sell­ing screen­plays, in which case my tune may change).

Around the coun­try, count­less num­bers of my col­leagues have been laid off since the strike began. We’re talk­ing thou­sands of peo­ple. It’s a hard time right now, and a very emo­tional one at that. While the writ­ers may be fight­ing the good fight the rest of us go to work each day and won­der if we’ll have any­thing to do, or worse, if we’ll be asked to come to work the next day. As long as this con­tin­ues, there is no ques­tion that more peo­ple will be fired. You can only hold onto peo­ple for so long before the com­pany as a whole begins to suf­fer. So do I want the writ­ers to stick it out until they get what they need? Of course. Then again, when the axe bears down on me, I won­der how I will feel.

When I came into work at mid­night tonight, the mood was that of jovial gloom. 20 of our cowork­ers, our friends, had been asked to leave effec­tive imme­di­ately (there was no notice since we are employed at-will). The head of the com­pany started pulling peo­ple into his office in the late after­noon and didn’t leave until close to 10:30pm, dur­ing which time, I’m told, peo­ple shifted around in fear that they might be next. But once the dust set­tled, those who were still around when I got in couldn’t help but share in relief that we remain employed in an indus­try that is caught in a dark time. For now, we can rest easy. But it only takes one look in our quiet machine room (usu­ally teem­ing with peo­ple around the clock, all fight­ing to get into a deck so they can fin­ish a par­tic­u­lar job in time) to know that unless the work starts pour­ing in again that we will have to weather at least one more shit-storm.

Here’s to hop­ing 2008 rocks and rolls. No mat­ter what hap­pens, we can make it a great one.

–Jon

P.S. I was going to post a review of Atonement, but believe it or not, writ­ing about the strike was less depress­ing. Good thing awards sea­son will be can­celed to avoid this movie get­ting any­thing. What a snooze-fest!

While try­ing to gather my thoughts on No Country For Old Men, I couldn’t help but update myself on the lat­est and great­est from the WGA strike. A quick googling will find a num­ber of crit­ics, Jamie Lee Curtis chief among them, who are unim­pressed by the writ­ers’ slo­gans on the picket line. Well, I have cer­tainly found the best one out there, as well as a few oth­ers that are enjoy­able. No sur­prise the win­ner came from the WGAe. Drumroll please:

The Winter of our DISSED CONTENT

(It’s noth­ing against those LA writ­ers, but I am yet to notice Shakespearean puns com­ing from their throngs of rallyers)

Some other decent fare:

Don’t Write Til it’s Right

I Wrote This (I promise it seems more clever scrawled on posterboard)

Nick Counter Hates Puppies and Babies

Ellen Is No Friend of Mine, Because She Crossed My Picket Line

BLOGSPLOSION!!!

Also for your view­ing pleasure…The WGA strike rules are incred­i­bly strict for both mem­bers and non-members. But hey, writ­ing is just one of those things you can do by acci­dent some­times, and writ­ers don’t know what to do with all this free time. So they have turned to about the only for­mat they can work on, the inter­net. Writers are offer­ing up some pretty great blogs, for both news and get­ting some jokes off their chest. Get it while it’s hot folks.

United Hollywood
Late Show Writers On Strike
Scribe Vibe @ Variety

Each of those sites will lead to a ton of other writer-centric blogs. Also check out a new blog devoted to the real vic­tims of the strike, non-union film and tv employ­ees whose jobs are either in jeop­ardy or have already got­ten the axe. Hopefully we can all stay off that list.

Get Back In That Room

It’s a sen­si­tive time, but hilar­ity will get us through it much eas­ier. Below, an hilar­i­ous video that shows how des­per­ate the writ­ers are to get some of that cre­ativ­ity out. Watch closely for the best picket sign around.

At 12:01am tomor­row, November 5, 2007, a major step in the cin­ema rev­o­lu­tion will take place. When the WGA mem­bers go on strike, there will be many in this coun­try whose lives are affected. Beyond the audi­ences who will be los­ing out on pro­gram­ming, some imme­di­ately, many peo­ple in this great indus­try will be out of work until the strike ends. As one of the peo­ple whose employ­ment will be on the line should the strike last for months, my heart goes out to all of these people.

However, there are big­ger issues at hand.

Hollywood is bro­ken. The busi­ness of media cre­ation has not been able to keep up with the cre­ation of new media, and the prob­lems therein have now boiled to the top.

Hollywood is based on an archaic sys­tem; a great sys­tem. Gone are the glory days of stu­dios’ ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion, keep­ing all work­ers in house, pump­ing out hun­dreds of films a year. But we long for those days long gone: the golden age.

Summer 2007 was like no other sea­son, ever, in any busi­ness. The money poured into the stu­dios like never before. It took a mere seven months for Paramount to post a bil­lion dol­lars gross this year. Audiences are dying to see movies, and they are fork­ing over their cash even as our econ­omy slopes to new lows. Houses and movie tick­ets have never been this expen­sive, but that isn’t stop­ping any­one from purchasing.

The point is that now, Hollywood is bro­ken. It has reached a sat­u­rat­ing point and burst.

So we must take up the reigns where they can­not get their act together. I would never pro­mote being a scab dur­ing this or any forth­com­ing strike.

Rather, be aware that there is a gap, many in fact, that must be filled. The chasm between pro­ducer and writer could soon turn into a widen­ing hole between film and audi­ence. Especially since this years as-of-yet snoozy oscar sea­son appears to be shortly fol­lowed by an even blander sum­mer 2008.

The rev­o­lu­tion has begun.

Fill in the gap.

Box office’s post-summer stum­ble @ Variety

All sum­mer long I rat­tled on about how glo­ri­ous of a time it was for movies. “There will never be another Summer 2007″ I would say to every­one I met. “Soak it up while you can.” And we did; and it was wonderful.

For those who were asleep all sum­mer long, you missed the high­est gross­ing sum­mer in Hollywood’s his­tory. Not only did the num­bers reach record heights on grosses, but even tra­di­tion­ally slow days, like July 4th, saw peo­ple head­ing into the mul­ti­plexes in droves. Paramount cracked a bil­lion dol­lars in rev­enue for FY 2007 not even halfway through the year. This sum­mer, Hollywood ran like the well-oiled machine it gained noto­ri­ety for being oh so long ago. Read on…

We have been locked in a quag­mire of a bat­tle for years now and there is prac­ti­cally no end in sight. The pub­lic is cry­ing out for an end to the mad­ness, but nei­ther Red nor Blue rep­re­sen­ta­tives have come up with a log­i­cal timetable to do so. Our lead­ers seem to be only con­cerned with the amount of money to be made by pro­long­ing the con­flict, rather than find­ing a viable solu­tion to bring peace and free­dom to the public.

That’s right. I’m talk­ing about the Blu-Ray HD DVD for­mat war.

Just this week, the armed forces’ favorite film­maker, Michael Bay, aired his frus­tra­tion over Paramount’s drop­ping of the Blu Ray for­mat. While the rest of us banded together to sim­ply label him a douche, as has now become com­mon suf­fix for Mr. Bay, tan­ta­mount to Esqire. But the over­paid moron’s state­ments seems to be a reflec­tion of what’s going on in the media indus­try in gen­eral right now. See, the whole con­cept of dig­i­tal deliv­ery is incred­i­bly new to us, and the grow­ing pains are drawn out and, quite frankly, awful.

So there are 2 amaz­ing for­mats out there which have been started by var­i­ous com­pa­nies, Sony being the big cat in the Blu-Ray camp up against Toshiba’s rabid dog over at HD DVD. The tech specs on the actual for­mats are extremely con­fus­ing, but it mostly boils down to the same thing. They are both incred­i­bly secure (though hack­ers have already got­ten through to rip them) and both offer dif­fer­ent fla­vors of sweet script­ing, so you can write mini pro­grams for some sweet spe­cial fea­tures. Both have extremely high capac­ity and thus, here’s the one we care about, can hold full frame HD media in pro­gres­sive scan.

For those aware of HD’s 20–30 year his­tory (depend­ing on who you ask), you know that the fight to bring HD where it is today has been an ugly uphill bat­tle, much of it involv­ing nego­ti­a­tions with the FCC and other gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies. If you con­sider how long the for­mat has been around, you’ll see that it’s ridicu­lous how long things are tak­ing. It’s nearly 2008 and still, few providers offer more than a dozen HD chan­nels. We already have 720p TVs cross­ing well below $1000 and 1080p on their way, it is in fact con­ceiv­able to get HD into every Americans’ home. The Europeans may not have as many net­works as us, but they’ve already got their shit together in the HD world, offer­ing tons of cool con­tent and tele­vi­sions that we are yet to enjoy.

But that’s a dif­fer­ent story. We’re here to talk about opti­cal media.

The amount of titles avail­able in these for­mats is enough to get a col­lec­tion started, but the issue for us end users is pick­ing a for­mat. You don’t want to get the wrong one and then have all these titles, then have to repur­chase them later. Sony should have been the declared vic­tor by now, but a lot of things hap­pened to keep Blu Ray down, much of it Sony’s fault. The biggest fluke was the Nintendo Wii, which has been killing the PS3 in the mar­ket. No one saw it com­ing. Sony has been recit­ing their mantra of func­tion over form in regards to graph­ics per­for­mance and HD out­put, and Nintendo slipped right under their radar with a supe­rior gam­ing experience.

For those not keep­ing score at home, the PS3 was setup by Sony to be the HD DVD killer. The PS2’s pop­u­lar­ity was so great, Sony fig­ured for the money you’d get a top of the line gam­ing sys­tem and a Blu Ray player, stock up on media, and for­get about the com­pe­ti­tion. But any­one who’s ever used the PS2’s DVD player knows that it sucked…a lot. Beyond that, peo­ple are much hap­pier shelling out $200 for a Wii than $600 for a PS3. The amaz­ing part of it all is that the Wii is beat­ing them EVEN THOUGH they are incred­i­bly hard to find. After the PS3 mixup kept HD DVD alive, we’ve moved to our cur­rent state, with play­ers being over­priced on both sides, mak­ing the deci­sion to con­vert even more frustrating.

In the world of post pro­duc­tion, where I spend my days and nights, this frus­tra­tion is 10-fold, because we work with HD con­tent all the time and have to deliver to our clients either cost-prohibitive tape or a stan­dard def DVD. We’re in the process of test­ing Blu-Ray soft­ware, but it almost never comes out right. The only other option is to drop $25K on one of only 2 legit Blu-Ray author­ing pro­grams. The sec­ond is $50K. Why not go HD DVD then, you say, since Apple’s DVD Studio Pro sup­ports it? Well, burn­ers aren’t avail­able in the US. So the con­fu­sion drags on ever longer, much longer than the Beta/VHS war went on.

Don’t for­get, this for­mat has been around over 2 decades and just now it’s gain­ing legit­i­macy. We’ve already begun invent­ing 2K work­flows and the first 4K plas­mas will make their way to the pro mar­ket soon. By the time the dust set­tles on HD, which I sorely hope will be in 2008, we’ll already be on to the next thing. Let’s hope we can pick up the pieces of stan­dard­iza­tion the next time around and not screw the public.